Saturday – day 1

Hi Everyone! Today is the first full day in China. Our guide, Patrick, was right on the money. I woke up at 4:07am. Even Sami was up before our 6:30 wake up call. We had a very “western” buffet breakfast. The scrambled eggs were quite different. Sami & I had a bite at the same time and we both had to really choke them down. After breakfast we went sightseeing. We went up to Victoria Peak the highest point in Hong Kong. Unfortunately it was overcast so the view wasn’t quite as nice as some of the pictures I have seen but it was still unbelievable. They have so many high rise buildings. The highest is 89 floors I think and they are in the process of building one 100+ stories. We then went to the fishing village of Aberdeen. We went on a little boat called a sampan and rode around the harbor. We saw the biggest floating restaurant in the world. We then went to Stanley Market. That was an adventure. Unfortunately Jacob’s wish of getting an X-Box didn’t come to fruition. It cost more than $100 over the US cost. Bummer. Sami was looking at purses. I was getting money from Paul and turned around and she was gone. I walked up and down several stores and couldn’t find her. I went back to the place where we were and asked the sales lady where she went. She pointed to an alley. They had taken her back there to show her more Coach bags. It was definitely a back alley deal. The price was listed as 2100 Hong Kong dollars. That is about $280 in US. We said we weren’t interested. The man there kept trying to put the purse in the bag and hand it to us. He went down to $300 but we turned him down. Sami found another bag she liked better at a different place. It was set up sort of like a flea market with shop after shop. It was hard not to buy everything in sight. We are trying to hold off until we get to Nanchang for most of the stuff. We did buy chops for Halle & Sami. Chops are carved stamps that have their name in Chinese and English. They come in a nice box with an ink pad. The top of the stamp is the animal of the year you are born. Sami’s is a goat and Halle’s is a boar. Paul bought a Chinese scenery print.

After our shopping trip we went to a Chinese Dim-sum lunch at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel. Finally, our first Chinese food. We tried the chop sticks but didn’t have too much luck and went on to the emergency utensil our guide spelled as f-o-r-k. We had shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, spring rolls, sweet & sour pork, some other kind of dumpling with fish eggs on it, fried rice, noodles and some watermelon. The kids were great eating/trying everything and of course Paul was too. I ate most of it, although I did pass on the fish eggs. I’ll stick to my meat & potatoes cuisine.

We don’t have anything planned for this evening. It’s after 4:00 now. Paul is sleeping and the kids are resting. I was so tired at lunch but I can’t seem to sleep now. I think the 4 cups of Jasmine tea I had at lunch probably had something to do with it. They said there is a laser light show tonight that I hope we can get to. Tomorrow is the big day – when we get Halle – yea. We leave the hotel at 8:30am. We’re supposed to get into Nanchang around 1:00 but they haven’t said when we are getting the babies yet. We will be getting a new tour guide then.

I just found out we don’t have our cord to download our pictures to the computer so we’ll have to find one/borrow one before we can post them.

Just saw your post Kathy - thanks for the update on Keisha. We've seen a few dogs and we miss her. Our tour guide assured us that they don't eat dogs or cats in Hong Kong but you never know :)

Hope everyone is well in the USA :)